Muslim education in Britain

Learning to live together, or separately

IT IS not easy to plan or regulate the education of children in an area where culture and demographics are shifting rapidly. There can be few places in Europe where that dilemma is felt so acutely as it is in Bradford, a declining industrial city in the north of England. Very nearly a quarter of the 523,000 people living within its municipal boundaries are Muslim, according to the 2011 census. That is a rise of eight percentage points over the past decade, while the self-declared Christian share of the population has fallen over the same period from 60% to 46%.

A high proportion of Bradford's Muslim population has family roots in south Asia, and in many cases they come from rural areas of Kashmir, where social and family mores are conservative even by the standards of the Islamic world. Just as they would back home, Asian Muslim parents in Bradford attach overwhelming importance to the instruction of their children in at least the basics of Islamic belief and practice. About 9,000 children in Bradford top up their regular state school education with at least an hour of instruction at a madrassa or religious school, several days a week; possibly 1,000 or more attend independent Muslim schools where they receive their entire education through a Muslim prism.

This week the Bradford Council for Mosques, representing 80 or so places of Muslim worship, published a report about the city's madrassas; its co-sponsors included the West Yorkshire Police and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a respected NGO. Although the language is cautious and euphemistic, it gives a sense of the distinctive social reality in which many Muslim children in England grow up. It opens by predicting that the number of Bradford children attending part-time religious schools "will increase considerably over the coming years" on present demographic trends.

It also notes that many religious schools "have a very narrow understanding of faith education - for example, limited to assisting children to identify and read the Quranic text, to memorise the five pillars of Islam and to be able to offer the five prayers. This is very basic, essential and highly commendable but parents desire their children to be given a fuller understanding of the faith...." And unfortunately, not all parents were as demanding as they should be. Indeed many "operate from a very low expectation base" and feel that "as long as [their children] come out being able to read the Quran, perform five daily prayers and know some other basics they are quite content."

In certain schools, there is "considerable difficulty" for children who receive most of their education in English and find their madrassa teacher is addressing them in a language of which they have "very basic or no command". What that means in hard reality, according to people who know the Bradford scene, is that in the poorest madrassas the teacher speaks nothing much but Urdu, which the English-born pupils hardly understand. Adding to the confusion, the children are made to learn and recite their prayers, and verses from holy writ, in Arabic; but they are not taught what these words mean.

A far more detailed knowledge of the faith is imparted by Bradford's full-time Islamic schools, such as the Darul Uloom Dawatul Imaan, a boarding school for boys and men aged between 11 and 23, some of whom will go on to become imams. As the report by Ofsted, Britain's official inspectorate of schools, approvingly notes: "There is outstanding provision for learning Arabic and Urdu with Arabic grammar and literature to meet the religious requirements of the Islamic theology programme...All students have the opportunity to practise the recitation of the Quran and nasheeds (Arabic religious songs)."

Whether their religious education is part-time or full-time, the Muslim youngsters of Bradford are growing up in a world that is very very different from their white and non-Muslim contemporaries. As the ethos of mainstream state education becomes more liberal and secular, children of Islamic background experience an environment where the role of religion is huge and growing. There is a sense of worlds diverging. Alyas Karmani, a well-known Bradford imam, told me that many Muslim parents were very happy with old-fashioned English grammar schools where there was an emphasis on order, discipline and excellence. But as "white" culture became more liberal (in its attitude to intoxicants and sexual behaviour, for example), the attraction of Islamic-only schools, where educational results were sometimes higher than average, had increased.

Saeeda Ahmad, a young Bradford woman who founded Trescom, a successful social-affairs consultancy, thinks the quality of Muslim education in the city will improve. But improvement, for her, does not mean growing more liberal or secular. Muslims of her generation wanted the sort of education that would help them and their children to explain their faith, when challenged, to other people. Mr Karmani also believes that madrassas are getting better. In his view, about 10% were already very good, and another 10% were so bad they might be in need of closure, while those in the middle were trying hard to improve.

Establishing madrassas where teachers and pupils speak the same language is doubtless a real problem, but it sounds a fairly easy one to solve. Harder problems may be in store. Imagine a Bradford in ten or 20 years' time where half the population consists of articulate, well-educated (in Islamic terms) Muslims, and the other half has grown up in a modern, permissive culture which is barely touched by organised religion. What will be the common language between them?

I'm not sure why people do not find this sort of thing incredibly upsetting, and I say this as a pro-immigration liberal. Granted, I live in the US so the vast majority of Muslims I've met are either Muslim in name only or belong to families fleeing Islamism, but I would be concerned if even these people made an active effort not to assimilate.

Why is it acceptable for people to immigrate to a foreign nation in large numbers and retain strict religious and cultural convictions from their home (failed) countries? And why is it reasonable for classes to be taught in Urdu when they are taking place in England (you know, the land of the English)?

I know it sounds a bit cruel, but responsible governments and societies should absolutely place strict controls on their immigration systems, not to keep people out, but to let the right people in. The Muslim world has hundreds of millions who hold liberal views fully compatible with the west and who long to move abroad, yet for some reason we continue to let questionable people in. Rather than inviting anyone and expecting them to assimilate and liberalize, why not invite the already compatible and ignore the problem altogether?

The problem would be much the same if a number of nineteenth century Afrikaners chose to settle in a British city and to live according to their faith and customs. It is not a religious issue or a problem with Islam, it is a problem of human development, or to speak plainly, of militant and obdurate backwardness.

This too shall pass. And the signs that a Muslim cultural enclave in the UK will not survive for long are already captured in this article. Kids being unable to speak the language of their parents, thereby hindering any sort of Islamic instruction in madrassas? And most madrassas being so bad that they are unable to teach more than a few prayer verses, rather than training these kids to be competent apologists for Islam, or God forbid, religious extremists?

Looks like integration is well on its way. Like I said, this too shall pass.

"Imagine a Bradford in ten or 20 years' time where half the population consists of articulate, well-educated (in Islamic terms) Muslims, and the other half has grown up in a modern, permissive culture which is barely touched by organised religion. What will be the common language between them?"

What a moronic and redundant comment. Communism touted the very same thing but not all of their problems just vanished into thin air like many of you idiots automatically assume would happen if all religion was done away with.
It's a lot more complex than just saying you wished there was no such thing as religion. How childish.

*the world would be so much better off without fundamentalists.
fun·da·men·tal·ism
1. A usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism.

I am forgetting the name of that documentary by Richard Dawkins, where he looked at the church-run (but state-funded) schools in the UK. (Yes, there was a segment filmed at a Muslim school, where the biology teacher did not understand the evolution theory - and, of course, it was taught as a "theory").

To answer the question in the last paragraph, the common language will be an unsophisticated English - reflecting the low standards in a poor provincial town's state schools, which both groups attend.

Very good point. Everyone of us needs to contribute in our own way to society at large. Working well with other people, whoever we come across, is an important part of it. A common language here means not only the sounds of communication, it means an accepting attitude.

If religious education reduces these elements of commonality, but is mostly for the well-being and 'solidarity' of one's own religious community, then it can become a recipe for disaster. A constant and aggressive reminder of one's 'special' 'exclusive' status in this and the 'other' world is not that different from racism, imo.

Cultures and religions can only co-exist through a good understanding and ACCEPTANCE of common ground in decency, peace, comradeship and, within reason, national loyalty.

You are comparing Europe to America. You see, America is, well, "protected" by two oceans and the US authorities do a lot of "filtering" regarding who is allowed to enter the country.
Just look on the map and you will see that this is nearly impossible in Europe.

We don't have the "well-regulated militia" defined by the Second Amendment. We are awash in poorly-regulated gun nuts who think that their "rights" supercede their responsibilities as citizens. Every day headlines provide evidence of how well this works in real life.

The way it is set up, there won't and can't be any common language between those two groups in future. The newcomers will be upset that the old timers own the real estate and major businesses, while the old timers will be upset about the change the newcomers bring. Culture clash fueled by economic reasons is never a pretty sight.
In the US a lot of gas stations and tiny businesses are owned and run by South Asians. It's a neat way to let people feel they own a stake in society, and running a business also requires a lot of interaction with the customers, suppliers, employees. The worst that can happen is the European model, where the immigrants tend to try to unsuccessfully look for work instead of running their own business, and as a result of failure start feeling discriminated against for cultural reasons.

Academies bill will enable a radical overhaul of England's schools, giving every school the chance to convert to an academy and giving parents the right to create free schools outside the control of LAs.The new schools will drive up standards and the education would be in accordance with the needs and demands of the parents. It will help native Brits, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities to set up their own schools for the education of their children. It is nothing to do with integration or segregation. Segregation already exists in British schoolings, it is not going to widen. President Obama supports free schools in America because they have benefitted the least well off the most. Educating children is the priority.

It is wrong to assert that a small unrepresentative group of Muslim activists tried to Islamises a state primary school in Woking. The silent majority of Muslim parents would like to send their children to state funded Muslim schools. They are not extremists who want to change of ethos of those schools where Muslim children are in majority. It is the democratic right of every Muslim parent to see that their children receive balanced education, so that when their children grow up, they do not find themselves cut off from their cultural roots and linguistic skills. It is a question of common sense, humanity and reason that bilingual Muslim children must be educated in state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. The whole world believes that people who speak more than one language is a vital economic asset. Pupils who speak more than one language do not cause difficulties. It is the politicians and monolingual teachers who are the problems for bilingual pupils. Muslim school will help to cultivate the child into a healthy, fully flourishing individual with a passion for learning. There are hundreds of state and church schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be opted out as Muslim Academies.

Muslim schools are not only faith schools; they are more or less bilingual schools. Bilingual Muslim children need to learn and be well versed in Standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. State schools with monolingual teachers do not teach Standard English to Migrant children. Bilingual Muslim children learn English in the playgrounds and in the streets. They speak street language with its own grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. The teachers let them speak the same accent in the classroom. They have no courage to stop them or correct them. This is one of the main reasons why one third of children have difficulties with reading when they leave primary schools. Majority of such children are Muslims. In other European countries and in the sub-continent argot and slang are not allowed into the classroom. In Britain primary school teachers do not feel that it’s their role to interfere with self-expression in any shape or form. They encourage children to read poems and stories written in ethnic dialects.

Muslim faith schools are more or less bilingual schools. Priority will be given to the teaching of Standard English, Arabic, Urdu and other community languages. All Muslim children will learn and be well versed in Standard English and Quranic Arabic and at the same time they will learn and be well versed in one of the community language to keep in touch with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry. Majority of children will learn Urdu language because it is a lingua franca of the migrants from the sub-continent. And majority of British Muslims are from Pakistan and their national language is Urdu.
Iftikhar Ahmadhttp://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

I found this piece rather depressing, praising as it does the indoctrination of children in cultures and religion which have so proved themselves elsewhere inadequate to create a society that can compete in the modern world. Yet I have faith in the pulling power of British culture. Most Muslims will eventually integrate and enjoy a better way of life which suits their individual needs. They may even contribute with elements of their cultures and religion to the sort of dynamic society required for the modern world. There may be quite a bit wrong with British culture but as long as politicians can understand the importance of the rule of law and an inclusive society the British can adapt to compete in whatever world awaits us in the future.